


"This inhuman place..."

by PepperCat



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Apologies, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Haunted Houses, Miscommunication, Past Child Abuse, Whump, bad places enforcing bad patterns, ghost story, kissing under the influence, pre-slash although I'm not sure I should use that tag unless I write a follow-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: Hartley finds Len at his childhood home. It's not a good place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [coldflashwavebaby](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coldflashwavebaby/pseuds/coldflashwavebaby)'s [Legends of SuperFlarrow Halloween Horrorfest](http://coldflashwave-baby.tumblr.com/post/149768872878/legends-of-superflarrow-halloween-horrorfest), although I'm not sure it quite counts; more discussion of that below.
> 
> Based on Stephen King's "The Shining" and [these scans](http://gorogues.tumblr.com/post/131584257447/lawrence-snart-first-of-all-im-going-to-warn) of Len's father.

Mick wasn't around. Len had been, but was gone. Lisa wasn't smiling.

Lisa was always best to talk to, so Hartley asked her what the hell was going on and when she finally said Len had gone home he backed off and then spent several hours digging through property records and then just visited the addresses, one by one.

It probably used to be an alright house, as small ones go. It looked like a bleak shell, though, the windows growing a coat of grime and no lights to be seen. Hartley listened and heard something rustling in the walls, not so large or friendly as rats, and swallowed. He'd much rather have Mick here, but he doesn't know how to find Mick.

 _Maybe if it was a good idea for anyone to see Len, Lisa would be here_ , he thought, and then:

_Maybe Lisa shouldn't have to have all the good ideas herself._

Alright.

Hartley went up the steps and tried the front door. It opened.

"Len?"

* * *

Len isn't expecting anyone. No-one comes here--no-one comes here to see _him_ , although one of the times he was here there was someone else living here, sleeping, and they never knew he'd come in. He's been here before, but not since Lewis died. It's worse this time.

He doesn't mind being alone. He's not alone. Something else is sucking the air out of the room in subtle breaths, and the drinking helps.

When the kid comes in calling a name that it takes him a minute to recognize, he's-- not pleased. But it's something, another distraction like the drinking, more effort but maybe worth it, something to take his mind off why he can't seem to breathe here, thirsty and too-hot and head pounding sluggishly.

Len gets off the couch, moves forward and has his arm around Hart's shoulders, sliding down his back, and Hartley's just noticing it as something more than casual when Len's hand reaches his waist, snakes around it, and turns to push him back towards the couch. Hartley sidesteps, takes the turn further, and backs away, ends up standing clear of Len in the middle of the room.

The place feels awful; dark and hazy, and if Hartley couldn't tell for sure there was nothing of the sort he'd suspect subsonics. He wonders if something in the walls is off-gassing, something toxic and unseen. Len is looking... well, drunk and miserable, but that's not it. His head is down and his hands are loosely curled; not quite fists, but ready to go there.

He looks like he's winding up for a fight, and Hartley's never seen him show it so clearly before.

Len steps forward again, puts his hands on Hartley's waist and pulls him close. He leans forward to kiss him and for a second Hartley kisses him back--but Len's mouth is warm and tastes bitter. There's a thrill at the abruptness of it all, unexpected and hungry contact, but it's not enough to banish the queasiness of being in the house. It's like trying to hear music through a smoke alarm and none of this is right, not at all, and when he puts his hands on Len's shoulders it's to brace himself as he pulls away.

"Maybe later," which are words Hartley would _never_ have believed would come out of his mouth, but the entire place is making his skin crawl. It's a dull knife scraping down his back, the heartsick feeling that comes in the split-second before the person you trusted tips their hand and shows you what's going to happen.

He doesn't want to be here, not even with Len. He wants them both to leave. The jokes can come later--Len needling him about being all talk, Hartley cursing himself for being scared off by musty air or whatever it is--but right now he wants to _go_. He's not welcome here.

Len doesn't hit him. He's thinking about it--not clearly, a tangle of angry images and hands itching to curl shut, close into fists or close on the kid's neck, either one could give him something--but Hartley is looking worried for him and not afraid of him and for a minute the misery is stronger than the rage.

"What else're you here for?" he spits.

And he means _why else would you want to see me_ but Hartley hears _what else are you good for_ and between the hurt and the dull nauseating ache of the house he's punching before he knows what he's doing.

It's possibly the last thing Len was expecting, which is why it lands.

It's a better punch than Hartley would have thrown three weeks ago, when Lisa interrupted his mock threats (because he was hungover and she would not stop singing and the coffee hadn't come yet) over one of their breakfasts to show him how to actually make a fist and then how to hit people, but it's panicked and off center and just ends up splitting Len's lip. Len snorts and jerks his head back, letting go, and Hartley's backing away. Part of his mind is telling him that he should push past Len and run, or try to trip him, but nothing is getting past the fact that Len looks angry with him and he wants to apologize, and so he's just backing away.

Len touches his mouth, and looks at the faint stain on his fingers, and then back at Hartley.

"You little--" He stops, considering. His head lowers, and the hand he isn't looking at curls into a fist. He looks bullish and mean. "You little _brat_."

It doesn't sound like Len. It's sloppier; the diction is worse, but the words are clear, and he doesn't sound sleep-deprived or drunk enough to be confused or--

Len grabs his collar and hits him. Hartley has time to start to turn his head, but half his vision explodes in a sheet of white light and his glasses go flying. He staggers and tries to get his hands up and Len's fist goes right past them, and again, and he can't think, pain's blaring through his skull and everything's behind glass.

He gets both his arms across his face and kicks out, connects with Len's knee and feels the other man stagger and his grip loosen, turns to run and Len grabs his ankle and yanks back. There's a second where Hartley can't feel the floor under his feet at all, and then it slams up to hit him full length. He's seeing stars and can't breathe, and then Len's half on top of him, one hand on his left shoulder and the other on his right wrist. He yanks Hartley's arm up and around, to the small of his back and then further, pushing it higher--

"Len!" And above him Len is _roaring_ , it's a terrible sound, like something sick and still dangerous enough that it should be behind bars at a zoo. "Please no Len stop _stop pleeaase--_ "

"'Please'?" For the love of fuck, there is no reason to think Len is in the mood to let the boy up and he's still saying _please_ and chattering Len's name like that kind of thing makes a fucking difference. Len tries, he really does, but he can't keep people safe or deal with them if they won't just _grow the fuck up_ \--

"Stop that! _Never_ ask me that! _Never_ ask _anyone_ that!" He's bearing down on Hartley's wrist, starting to put his weight into it, and it's getting to the point where the joint can't go much further and there's actually some resistance to his grip. No credit to the kid, it's just that arms don't want to bend this way, aren't made for the fingers to be edged up towards the shoulder blade one shaking inch at a time, and by fucking god the kid is going to learn this lesson--

"You hear me--"

Hartley stops talking and screams.

It's a high sharp sound. It's an _old_ sound, an unmuffled admission of terror like neither this house nor Len have heard in years, and he remembers events instead of just patterns. Something tangling around him tatters loose.

He lets go.

He rocks back, getting clear of Hartley, who bolts as well as he's able; scrambles over to a sitting position and backpedals frantically, his feet and one good hand shoving him over the cheap carpet until he hits the wall, doesn't stop, backs himself into the corner with the arm Len twisted cradled against his chest.

Len wants to warn him it's a bad place to go, it's too easy to get trapped there, it's not even the corner near one of the windows. There's no way out. If Len got to his feet and started kicking--

He thinks he's going to throw up. "Hartley." That's the name. It doesn't sound right. No-one's ever said the name before in this house. Len tries to hang on to the sound of it.

Hartley swallowed and then said "I'll go." His voice was still steady; Len didn't countenance it, not with the tears on his face, but it was true. Kid might cry, but you usually couldn't tell; breath control, he said, years of playing the flute. That was something. "I'm sorry. I just need a minute and I'll go."

 _No no no..._ "Are you-- did I break it?" Hartley's face was white under the blood and Len couldn't tell if it was fear or pain. Joints were delicate things, and the way he'd screwed Hartley's wrist around, felt the elbow stretch under his weight-- "Hart, I'm sorry. What happened?" The kid had pulled away and he'd said something and then--

"You hit me," Hartley said in a small clear voice. "That is, I hit you and then you hit me. Two or three times, I think? And then you got my wrist. And my arm. The arm thing."

Len looked down at his hands. Two of his fingers had a small smear of blood on them from his own lip, and the rage flared up again like an infection. The rest of the blood--and there wasn't as much as there could have been, thank god--was all Hart's.

"Why did--" No. Okay. He scanned the floor and reached forward to pick up Hartley's glasses. One of the arms was loose, but the lenses weren't cracked. "Can you stand up?"

Hartley blinked at the distance between the two of them. He'd need to roll forward and get his good arm and both feet under him to do it, and Len was already a little too close. "Rather not."

"Can-- Just let me take a look at you, Hart. I swear I'm not gonna hit you." Hartley didn't seem very convinced, and Len groped for a reason. Something to make it make sense, a way that it can work. _Just stop fucking whining_ bubbles to his lips and he coughs it back down.

"Look. Lisa knows you're here, right?" There's a tiny stiff nod from Hartley. "She'll already be furious. I fucked up, but I won't make it worse. She'd kill me. Let me help."

There's a long pause and Len waits. He's crouching, making himself fairly small, but he's between Hartley and the door, and the kid doesn't have his glasses, and he's scared. Len knows he should probably leave, get the hell away from Hartley and find someone else to come get him, but he has to know how bad it is--how badly he's hurt Hartley, how much he's scared him--and he can't bring himself to offer to leave.

He tells himself he'll go if Hartley asks.

"Alright." Hartley's voice is small, and lifting in pitch a little, but still steady. "Can you find my glasses?"

"Yeah, I've got 'em." Len moves forward, kneels in front of Hart. There are tears running out of the kid's eyes, and the left one is starting to swell shut. There's something stuck like a bone in Len's throat, and when he swallows, it doesn't shift. "Can I check you out first?"

Hartley managed a crooked smile. "I thought you'd never ask."

"Seriously."

"No, I really did."

" _Hart_." It was pleading, not angry.

"...okay." Len's fingers are cool and light on Hartley's face; they skirt the edge of the bruise. Hartley thinks he should be flinching, but it all happened so _fast_ , and he still can't quite feel like what happened belonged to him.

"Look at me?" It was easier having something he needed to do. It pushed the grimy feel of the house back a little, reduced it to just another bad place to do a job, and Len told himself he'd worked under worse circumstances. He could do this.

Green eyes blinked up at him and Len resisted the urge to wipe Hartley's face dry; the other man's blood was still on his hands. There was a split around the outer edge of the eye socket, not deep but bloody. But the eyes were clear, and neither pupil was blown or pinpoint. "Okay. You good to put your glasses on?"

Hartley took the glasses from Len one-handed and held them by one hinge, shook them out so the arms unfolded. He slid them on, wincing a little as the arm pressed against the bruise, and pushed them up to settle properly on his nose.

Len sat next to him, back against the wall. "Give me your hand."

Hartley swallowed. "Tell me again how Lisa'll kill you if you make it worse?"

"She will _murder_ me," Len assured him. He was trying to keep his voice light, but there was that pain lodged crooked in his throat again. "Seriously, k-- Hart." It felt like calling Hartley _kid_ or (worse) _boy_ would be easy right now, and lead to things, and the thought left Len queasy. "There wouldn't be any pieces of me left that were bigger than your rat."

Hartley hiccuped a laugh and offered his bad hand gingerly to Len. "That's specific. Which one?"

"The smallest one." Len took Hartley's hand carefully, letting it rest on his own. "Did anything pop in your arm? Kind of like bubble wrap?"

"I'm flattered you have such a high opinion of my perception, but it was a little hard to pay attention to details at the time."

"You'd probably have heard--"

"Didn't happen."

That was a plus. "Tell me if it hurts."

"It hurts," Hartley said instantly. He suddenly sure that the next thing Len was going to do was change the grip on his wrist and push him over and crank his arm around, and then he'd be down on the floor screaming again while Len hissed into his ear about exactly what he'd do if Hartley breathed even a _hint_ of it all to Lisa--

"Tell me if it hurts worse," Len said instead, slowly straightening Hartley's arm.

Hartley hissed air between his teeth and turned it into a stream of words; "--really have to ask what's wrong because I was pretty sure you were upset about something and I came to see if I could h-h-help--" Len stopped moving his arm and Hartley pulled it back, swallowed a whimper between his teeth.

"Come on," Len said. "We'll get out of here, get you some ice, keep the swelling down." _Get out of here_ seems the critical element now.

"I thought you were going to break my arm." Hartley's voice was distant and slightly hollow. "I mean, I was waiting for the snap. Breaking bones sound very odd from the inside. A clean break is a kind of crisp _bounk_ noise with a deeper reverberation--"

"Hart--"

Hartley pushed his glasses up to his forehead and wiped at his eyes with his good hand. "It sounds like a celery stick being broken in half inside an iron pipe, if you want to know," he informed Len, and then even reining in his breath as hard as he can he's making little hitching noises, and the blood on his face is smearing salt-wet with tears.

 _Stop crying_ , Len wants to say, and he doesn't dare. Not here. Those words mean something different in this house. Instead he puts an arm around Hartley's shoulders and helps him to his feet, slow and awkward, and if Hartley cries on him a little, Len doesn't complain. The cold salt touch clears his head a little and he'll take anything that helps right now.

* * *

When Mick gets back, they burn the house to the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the refrains in _The Shining_ is "This inhuman place makes human monsters"; it's a beautiful encapsulation of haunted houses that are not mere buildings with ghosts, but toxic _places_ that corrupt those within them. Eleanor Vance. Jack Torrance. Ben Rolf. They are not the best people on their own, but when you put them in the haunted house and it starts to play on them, to pull them into all the old bad patterns...
> 
> Holy Jesus, what a horror show.
> 
> This story riffs off several elements from _The Shining_ ; the distorted thinking and justification of actions taken while under the influence (although for a really lovely version of that, Richard Matheson's _Earthbound_ actually beats out King's _The Shining_ , to my mind), the near-breaking of the arm, the abusive father, the final fate of the building in question. It pulls at least part of Len's dialogue from his father, in the scans linked above. It's also, pretty unabashedly, whump.
> 
> I hope it was at least passingly interesting. (And I'm sure I'm missing some useful tags, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know!)


End file.
